Raising the Morticians (S2) – Scalpel

When the brick of Obulus is not for you maybe it’s time to slice and dice with Scalpel…

Stats

She is fast (like Fishermen fast), her TAC is amazing and well up there with the top end. Her DEF is average (she gets some ARM) and INF is also average for captain. Her KICK is reasonable with OK dice pool but only average range.

Character Traits

Anatomical Precision – Removing ARM is always a good thing and makes sense someone called Scalpel would have it.

Slippery – If she walks away from someone she is going to be harder to hit on the parting blow with her ARM and DEF it means she shouldn’t have to worry too much about what the result is (unless there is a low KD about).

Heroic Play

Unnatural Stamina – For the cost of a MP she can use Second Wind without the INF cost. This makes her a little more INF efficient as SW is a very nice ability especially with all her dodges she can be THE hit-and-run player around. Never mind letting the likes of Ghast/Casket move around more easily without the INF cost.

Legendary Play

Voodoo Strings – It is a big pulse and pushes all enemy models towards her. This on the face of it is lacklustre but it is very subtle as this sort of thing pulls models out of position. Suddenly a model is moved out of threat range, or a models movement is hinder by another model and so potentially messing with activation order. Or it can simply be clumping players up for a Silence AoE or a Ghast unmasking. It actually has loads of possibilities but deciding when to drop it will lead to a touch of analysis paralysis if you are not careful.

Playbook

Her playbook is pretty scary she has access to a lot of momentum (6/7 columns) and she has access to a lot of damage most of it momentous generating. On top of this she also has dodges and some pushes working together this gives her a great amount of repositioning power. As well as easily getting out of engagement with those dodges to use her Heroic to get into a more favourable position for next turn.

Plays

Tormented Agony – Costs 1 Guild Ball (4/7 hits), this is an interesting ability as it allows you to mess with your opponents INF allocation. As you can move INF on the model you are hitting to another enemy model that hasn’t gone yet. Suddenly the key model for the turn can’t do anything as the mascot has all the INF. It will also mess horrendously with Furious models, as an engaged Boar/Rage with no INF at all makes them very sad. Interesting play but don’t hinge a turn on it, use it only if it will help you and not just give your opponent a different window to use. It does give you momentum when you use it as well though.

Second Wind – Costs 2 INF, this allows the target model to move its Jog at the end of its activation. This allows for some great hit-N-run action as well as allowing some of the slower players to get up the field quicker. It can also allow scorer of goal to really shift (Jog push dodge is always a good distance).

Wake the Dead – Costs 2 INF, this grants reanimate to a model for the turn. This greatly increases the survivability of a model (as it means your opponent will need at least 1 more INF to get the job done). Being able to remove conditions as well is awesome on top of everything else. Knowing when to use this is going to be difficult but worth considering.

Overall

A very quick captain with a lot of options on mobility, with the amount of momentum she can generate you can almost see her as having Second Wind for free. She also allows for some nice protection with Walk the Dead. I could see this being pretty good on the likes of Cossett as she is sooo squishy.

She allows a lot of manoeuvrability with her playbook both of herself and the model she is hitting. Imagine charging in then bringing that model back towards your team ready for more punishment. She is a damage machine (who will probably really like Rage for Tooled Up) which is perhaps her main aim in most turns. However with the added bonus of Tormented Agony you can really mess up with your opponents allocation of INF especially as 10” is a big bubble to do the hand off for. What will prove tricky to get right is her Legendary it could be simply as a way of not triggering unpredictable movement (or even ignoring it after it is used) to just messing up with an opponents positioning.

What is also worth pointing out is her counter-attacking with Tormented Agony available, that could really make some opponents cry.

She hits pretty hard (for a non-brewer/butcher) and enjoys messing with the opponents team in a very different way to Obulus. OK he is harder to pin down and his legendary is more straight forward and we all know the uses of puppet master. Scalpel messes with positioning of one model (usually while pummeling it into the ground). She really lives up to her name..